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Yemen’s Chaos Aids the Evolution of a Qaeda Cell

Members of Yemen's Counterterrorism Unit trained near Sana last year under the watch of an American Special Forces instructor.Credit
Karim Ben Khelifa

SANA, Yemen — Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has rapidly evolved into an expanding and ambitious regional terrorist network thanks in part to a weakened, impoverished and distracted Yemeni government.

While Yemen has chased two homegrown rebellions, over the last year the Qaeda cell here has begun sharing resources across borders and has been spurred on to more ambitious attacks by a leadership strengthened by released Qaeda detainees and returning fighters from Iraq.

The priorities of the Yemeni government have been fighting a war in the north and combating secessionists across the south. In the interim, Al Qaeda has flourished in the large, lawless and rugged tribal territories of Yemen, creating training camps, attacking Western targets and receiving increasing popular sympathy, Yemeni and American officials say.

Al Qaeda’s growing profile in Yemen became clear after a Nigerian man, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, was able to overstay his visa here by several months, connect with Qaeda militants and, American officials believe, leave this country with a bomb sewn into his underwear.

In his weekly address on Saturday, President Obama for the first time directly blamed Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula for the bombing attempt and said that fighting the group would be a high priority. “In recent years, they have bombed Yemeni government facilities and Western hotels,” he said, adding, “So as president, I’ve made it a priority to strengthen our partnership with the Yemeni government.”

The core of the group here is still thought to be small, perhaps no more than 200 people. But the group has the important advantage of being part of a larger, regional structure, having merged a year ago with the Saudi branch of Al Qaeda to form Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. And it has been able to originate fairly sophisticated operations here, in Saudi Arabia and now on an airliner headed for Detroit.

Though Yemen played an early role in Al Qaeda’s history — it is Osama bin Laden’s ancestral homeland, and it was the staging ground for the 2000 attack on the American destroyer Cole — the key chapters in the story of Al Qaeda’s rise here have been written recently by leaders who were released from detention at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, escaped from Yemeni prisons or were drawn to shelter here by common cause and ideology.

Those men have transformed and reoriented a weak local Qaeda cell that had made a kind of peace with the government after 2003. In the year since the Saudi and Yemeni branches merged, Al Qaeda has taken full advantage of the government’s preoccupation with the rebellions, building support from the tribal structures and traditions in Yemen’s poor and lawless territories.

One big moment came in February 2006, when 23 imprisoned men suspected of being members of Al Qaeda escaped from a high-security prison, reportedly with the aid of some Yemeni security forces. All but three or four of the men were eventually recaptured or killed by Yemeni security forces. But one prisoner, Nasser al-Wuhayshi, became leader of the Qaeda cell in Yemen and moved to reorganize it, focusing it on attacks against nearby Western targets. Another prisoner, Qassim al-Raimi, became the military commander.

The next year, Mr. Wuhayshi found a deputy and, perhaps, a rival for leadership, Said Ali al-Shihri, 36, a Saudi citizen. He was released from six years’ detention in Guantánamo Bay in December 2007 to a Saudi-run rehabilitation program. He disappeared from Saudi Arabia and emerged in Yemen, and he is considered by many to be the rising star of the local movement. Mr. Shihri had traveled to Afghanistan in 2001 and was apparently wounded there, and he was captured crossing back into Pakistan in December of that year.

Another Guantánamo detainee, also captured in Pakistan in 2001 and released to a Saudi rehabilitation program, is Ibrahim Suleiman al-Rubaysh, 30, a Saudi who also disappeared and is now described as the mufti, or theological guide, to Al Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula.

Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born, English-speaking Internet imam of Al Qaeda here, returned to Yemen, his family’s home, in 2004. He was arrested in 2006 on security charges and was released in December 2007 after 18 months in prison. He then went to Britain and is believed to have returned to Yemen last spring.

Mr. Awlaki, 38, is not thought to have a major operational role. Still, American and Yemeni officials say they believe he provided a crucial link to Mr. Abdulmutallab, first through the Internet and then by meeting him in Yemen and helping to recruit him to the airliner bomb plot. He also provides Qaeda operatives here with a crucial shield against the government: the protection of his powerful tribe, the Awlakis. As in Afghanistan and Pakistan, tribal codes require the protection of those who seek refuge and help — even more so for a clan member and his colleagues. Mr. Awlaki is also said to have helped negotiate deals with other tribal leaders.

Abdulelah Hider Shaea, a Yemeni journalist who studies Al Qaeda and knows Mr. Awlaki, denied in an interview that the imam was a member of Al Qaeda, saying instead that he served as an articulate window to jihadism for English speakers.

Yemeni officials, in two major strikes against Qaeda targets in December, first said that they had killed Mr. Awlaki, but he later spoke to Mr. Shaea to prove that he was alive, as other key leaders seem to be. But dozens of Qaeda family members and local residents were killed, increasing antigovernment sentiment.

In recent years, Al Qaeda has had an increasingly rich recruiting pool.

Magnus Ranstorp, a terrorism expert at the Swedish National Defense College, said that many of the nearly 2,000 Yemenis who were believed to have fought in Iraqi insurgencies had returned to join the cause here. And many Yemenis who went to Saudi Arabia to seek work — like Mr. bin Laden’s father — have had children who have been influenced by the more radical Islam of Saudi Arabia, bringing ideas of jihad home to an already conservative Islamic Yemen.

There has also been an influx to Yemen of at least 200,000 refugees from Somalia, according to official figures, and probably many more than that. Al Qaeda has also been very active in Somalia, seeking refuge and recruits among the Islamist groups there. And now that Yemen has proved to be a safe training ground for Al Qaeda, a link between the Yemeni and Somali contingents has strengthened.

But Al Qaeda here also has problems, including a possible leadership struggle.

Although Mr. Wuhayshi is still widely believed to be in control, he is considered uncharismatic, and his leadership and the merger were not endorsed by Mr. bin Laden’s deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, until spring 2009. But the airliner plot has brought praise from Qaeda-associated Web sites, as did a bold but unsuccessful effort to kill Saudi Arabia’s counterterrorism chief, Prince Muhammad bin Nayef, who was wounded last August by a suicide bomber equipped with the same explosive provided to Mr. Abdulmutallab.

Al Qaeda’s growth here has come as President Ali Abdullah Saleh, 67, has intensified the war in the north against Houthi rebels, who are Shiites with support from Iran, according to Yemeni officials and analysts. Mr. Saleh’s second priority is a spreading secessionist movement in the south, which has been largely peaceful until now but which further threatens his long hold on power, with his own succession unclear.

“President Saleh’s first priority is to stay in power,” said Abdullah al-Faqih, a political scientist at Sana University. “Two, at this point, is the war in the north. Three is the south. And sometimes Al Qaeda doesn’t even make the list at all — it drops from the agenda.”

In that regard, American officials are finding an uncomfortable resemblance to their fight in Pakistan, where Al Qaeda’s leadership is believed to have sanctuary in rugged tribal areas while the government is preoccupied with its archrival India and the disputed territory of Kashmir. And as in Pakistan, the American military and intelligence involvement in Yemen must be cautious and seen as advisory, without putting troops on the ground.

In addition to sending money, the United States has sent Special Forces troops to help train and equip Yemeni forces and has provided sophisticated satellite and communications intelligence.

Yemen is also the Arab world’s poorest country, with a major water shortage and 70 percent of the gross domestic product coming from oil that is expected to run out in seven years, and it is also deeply corrupt.

The new American focus and money have caught Mr. Saleh’s attention, Mr. Faqih, the political scientist, said. “But right now we have the military in the north and the security services in the south,” he said. “Of course, we’re not ready to fight Al Qaeda. You’d have to reposition the government and the security forces, and it would take months.”

Still, Al Qaeda is also becoming more of a threat to Yemen. In November, Al Qaeda attacked government forces in the Kushum Al Ain area of Hadramawt Province. Three officials were killed. Later that month, near Marib, Al Qaeda executed a senior intelligence officer after holding him for months and then trying him, as if it were the real government of the area.

Al Qaeda has also declared support for the secessionist protests in the south and is thought to be strong in southern Abyan Province, which gives it access to the sea.

Despite the threat, “relations between the government and Al Qaeda are very tricky,” Mr. Faqih noted.

“There is, as in Pakistan, some intertwining of politics, society and the security forces with Al Qaeda,” he said. Al Qaeda has been skillful in making alliances of its own with important tribes in provinces like Hadramawt, Shabwah, Marib, where much of the oil is, and Abyan.

Some of that intertwining has happened because President Saleh has been encouraging a radical Sunni Islamist group to help fight the Shiite Houthi rebellion in the north. Some analysts say they believe that movement is also feeding the support for Al Qaeda. Mr. Saleh has also used jihadis who fought in Afghanistan and Iraq against the Houthis, as he used some of them to fight in the south during the country’s 1994 civil war.

Mr. Faqih warned that Mr. Saleh must seek political ways to calm the rebellions or risk creating even more recruits for Al Qaeda. The war against the Houthis is pushing them toward some kind of alliance with Al Qaeda, despite religious differences, much as Shiite Iran backs the Sunni Hamas movement in Gaza, he said.

“It can happen,” Mr. Faqih said. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend, and you can turn it into the Kandahar of Yemen.”

Charlie Savage contributed reporting from Washington.

A version of this article appears in print on January 3, 2010, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Yemen’s Chaos Aids Evolution Of Qaeda Cell. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe